For a second I, too, became misty-eyed with Scottish national feeling.

'No Union, No Union, English Dogs." That was the cry Daniel Defoe heard from a mob rampaging one night through Edinburgh in October 1706, less than a year before the Treaty of Union married Scotland and England, creating Great Britain. The current debate over Scottish independence is tame by comparison. But its protagonists are no less disputatious, and the outcome of their debate could have ramifications as historically significant as the three-century-old union.